Destroy the source of negativity, before it destroy you

Negative situation or positive situation both has a direct relationship with thoughts, which is not a simple or direct relation; rather they have a reciprocal relationship. Many times our thoughts generated are responsible for certain situations and many times the situation we are in are responsible for generating thoughts. In our article on thoughts like, Monitoring Thoughts, Judging your Thoughts and Controlling Thoughts we deeply discussed the role of thoughts in our life. Those articles were dedicated to some deep rooted thought issues. They have path mixed with spirituality, but in our daily life what thought related problems we face are different, and without curing these small problems, they are worthless. In our last article Life amid Negativity we saw how negativity whether tangible or intangible both has a strong influence on our life and how by keeping ourselves positive we can deal with this evil. When negativity is tangible, it reflects in our acts and behavior and when it is intangible, it spans the thoughts and beliefs of an individual restricting him to act or behave in a constructive manner. As someone has said, "negative thoughts lead to negative actions, as the mind directs the body."

If a person is full of positivism, then it becomes easier to deal with negative thoughts. In such cases, because of his natural positivism, he may be able to guide his mind away from negative thoughts. Keeping both, you and situation positive is a tough but very-important job. There are many ways to control your thoughts but it is better to staunch the source of such thoughts. Thoughts generate as a response of some information simulating brain, and the major source of information is our conversation with people we live with. If people in your company always talk immature and unethical with you, definitely they are not going to fill you with virtue. Then why not to make an effort to stop yourself, to go within the purview of such information which is not useful for our positive grooming. A famous anecdote of 'Socrates' may help in this effort --

In ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem. One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, "Do you know what I just heard about your friend?"

"Hold on a minute," Socrates replied.

"Before telling me anything I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test."

"Triple filter?"

"That's right," Socrates continued.

"Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're going to say. That’s why I call it the triple filter test. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"

"No," the man said, "Actually I just heard about it and ..."

"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it’s true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?"

"No, on the contrary…"

"So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, but you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though, because there's one filter left: the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?"

"No, not really …"

"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?"

In our first article on thoughts, Monitoring Thoughts we discussed that 90% of our generated thoughts are useless. Now we can say that 60% of them destroy our positive attitude and reinforce negativity in life. There are various ways and techniques to stay positive but the above said method of filtering can serve as a strong base while dealing with negativity. All the efforts to stay positive are active methods but this is the only passive method one can adopt. We not only need to filter what people speak to us but also what we observe in our daily routine. Before imbibing those observations we must carry out this filter test. Remember, that negativism if not tackled correctly in its early phase, grows along with a person and becomes all-encompassing.

Removal of negativity is not possible with a wave of any magic wand, the removal of negative thoughts has to be learned and practiced.